November 09, 2021 09:35
The images are familiar: hundreds of men and women walking in the cold of November, driven by the hope of finding a refuge. All this reminds us of 2015 and the wave of Syrian migrants who tried the way to Europe and security, between barbed wire and barred borders.
But the big difference with respect to then is the current exploitation of the migratory wave. Today’s images come from Belarus, near the Polish border. According to witnesses, migrants are literally guided by Belarusian border guards, in what appears clearly as a destabilization attempt orchestrated by the Russian-backed Minsk dictatorship.
The Polish interior minister released photos showing Belarusian border guards along the border armed with pincers cutting barbed wire. According to information provided by the German services, between 800 and a thousand migrants arrive daily in Belarus on flights from Iraq (the number of which has doubled) to then be taken to the border.
The Minsk regime knows well what is the means to put pressure and take revenge on Europeans: to awaken the fear of migrants
It is not a mystery: the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko wants to make the European Union pay the sanctions imposed on his regime in May, after the hijacking of a Ryanair airline on which a dissident was traveling. Relations between the Union and Belarus were compromised after the elections in the summer of 2020, manipulated by Lukashenko.
The Minsk regime knows well what is the means to pressure and take revenge on Europeans: to awaken the fear of migrants. The migration crisis of 2015, far wider than the current one, with one million people traveling, had deeply divided the European population, with hostile reactions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Even today the issue is extremely sensitive, and Belarus knows it can harm a country like Poland.
The Warsaw government is particularly harsh on migrants trying to cross its territory, and does not intend to take into account the fact that they too are Lukashenko’s victims.
Polish civil society has mobilized, as shown by the case of the Grupa Granica association, whose volunteers try to act in the border region. Quoted by the Central Courrier d’Europe, the NGO warns the international community about the fate of these migrants, “crushed between the cynicism and brutality of Minsk and the intransigence of Warsaw”.
On 8 November, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen denounced what she considers “a cynical exploitation of migrants” and promised the help of the 27 to the countries involved. Von der Leyen also announced that new sanctions are under consideration against Minsk but also against the airlines participating in the regime’s maneuver.
Will Europe prove to be up to the challenge? The worst thing would be to allow the emergence of new divisions, the first victims of which would be the battered migrants at the border while the winner would undoubtedly be the dictator of Minsk. A geopolitical test is underway that Europe would have gladly done without.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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